All the Best People Are
by lookingformylionheart
Summary: Blaine never understood how life could be going great around him, while a black hole just showed up in his chest one day and decided to swallow him from the inside out. Depressed!Blaine, dealing with some of the miss-truths of depression, will end happy.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I have never written a fanfic, before, EVER, and this is sort of terrifying. So please be gentle. I am thinking of continuing this (read: I've basically already started the next chapter), but I wanted to see what kind of response it got first. Also, I live in Ohio (not near Lima though) and I'm taking artistic license with regards to distance and travel between Westerville and McKinley. Mostly because I can and because Ryan doesn't seem to do research either. But anyway, enjoy! The title is a quote from Alice in Wonderland, and it is very important to the end of the story. And, it will be a happy ending. I don't like sad endings, so I won't write them. Also, this is unbetaed and I am a flawed human being, so please, if you catch any mistakes, don't hesitate to point them out!

**EDIT:** Okay, take two. I'm sorry if you read this and then it disappeared, but apparently I fail at life and in the process of trying to edit it I somehow deleted it. D: Did anyone else have this problem the first time they posted a story? *hides face in mortification*

**Disclaimer: Glee is not mine. Neither is Blaine or Kurt or anyone else you recognize. Trust me, I am not that cool. **

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><p>All the Best People Are<p>

It was the loud, obnoxious whistling of his alarm clock that made Blaine realize, quite suddenly, that he was awake and staring dumbly at his ceiling. He absently wondered how long he'd been laying in bed half-conscious. His arms and legs felt heavy with the sort of stillness that only comes from muscles being held immobile and his eyes felt gritty and tired, so he supposed it must have been awhile. It was dark, and uncomfortably cool, and he wanted nothing more than to curl up under the covers and forget about McKinley and today and the fact that instead of a sea of starched navy and red to greet him on his first day, he'd most likely be welcomed with a sea of red and blue slushies. He shut his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands against them until it hurt. He exhaled sharply and threw an arm out in the general direction of the buzzing alarm.

The sudden silence was both welcomed and regretted. It was a loud sort of silence, punctuated only by his uneven breaths, the rhythmic chirring of the crickets near his window, and the sleepy sounds of the world outside as it slumbered away without him. It was very early, and the house—his room—seemed empty and endless around him, and it would be so easy to just close his eyes and slide back into thoughtless darkness.

_Courage, Blaine, courage! C'mon, you can do it. Up, up, up,_ his mind rather helpfully supplied. He snorted, and was left to wonder if this was a sign of madness.

He was pulled from his thoughts by the _thump_ of his phone as it vibrated off the nightstand and landed on his pillow. He looked at it strangely for a moment before realizing it was backlit with a candid picture of his boyfriend. He sighed dreamily, something he seemed to do a lot when his thoughts turned to Kurt, and hurriedly pressed answer.

"_Blaine, I know you like sleeping in, and as your awesome boyfriend I would normally be very happy to enable your bum-like behavior, but I'm serious, if you make me late today I'll—"_

"Whoa, whoa, I'm awake!"

"_Oh, good morning then." _A tinkling, musical laugh followed over the line.

Blaine smiled, humming softly to a tuneless melody. He felt ridiculous, and probably looked even more so while smiling in the dark like a love-sick puppy, but Kurt affected him in a way no one else ever had.

"—_aine. Hello? Blaine Anderson, you had better not have fallen asleep again!"_

"Sorry, what did you say? I got distracted." He turned on the bedside lamp and rolled out of bed, finally, suddenly feeling like he'd been lying down for far too long. A jittery kind of anxiety had settled near the base of his spine, and he sprinted to the other side of the room to dispel it, but it only coiled tighter.

"_What were you thinking about?"_

"You."

"_You are a dork. But I love you anyway."_

His heart swelled, and he almost hated it, because it reminded him how hopelessly smitten he was, how much he _needed_ Kurt—something he was not used to yet, needing someone else so desperately that his chest ached with it—and how much Kurt really didn't need him, but stayed nonetheless, because for some reason, he saw a very imperfect boy perfectly and decided to love him anyway.

"I love you too." Well damn, he hadn't meant to sound so breathless. Or weepy. He leaned against his closet door and carefully composed himself.

"_Blaine, are you _crying_? What's wrong?"_

"…Of course I'm not crying. I'm fine. Just a little tired is all. And, you know, allergies." He faked a sneeze loudly for effect.

"_Really."_

He wanted to say, _No, actually I'm not. I feel silly and awkward and unworthy of you and I don't want to leave Dalton, but I do, because I'm a coward and this is how I can prove to myself that I'm not completely unfixable and you don't need me, but I'm going to follow you anyway because I really, really need you to be mine forever…_ But he couldn't bring himself to voice it, so he choked the words back down his throat with a cough and said instead, "Really. I'm fine."

"_If you're sure…oh, crap, is that the time? Blaine, I have to go, Finn's not awake yet, I still have to make breakfast and you need to hurry and get ready. I'll see you in a bit, okay? Love you!"_

"Yeah, you're right. And, I love you too. A lot." He really had no excuse for turning into an emotional mess besides the fact that he was quite possibly losing his sanity. He laughed nervously, "And, um, I might be going crazy. At least I think so anyway."

"_Oh, but only the best people are, dear."_

"I knew I would regret buying you that movie." _But seriously, how are you so perfect?_

"_You can't deny me anything and you know it. And as much as I would love to continue this, I really do have to go. See you later."_

"Right, of course. See you later." There was a faint click and he let the phone slide down from his ear, its weight heavy and warm in his palm.

It was grounding, a constant pressure, and it kept momentarily from slipping back into the depression that had been plaguing him the deeper into summer—and the farther away from Dalton, and much closer to the edge of being irreversibly in love with Kurt—he got. It was something he could understand; it was tangible and real where his thoughts and feelings were messy and abstract and difficult to unravel. It wasn't much, but it was something.

But he couldn't stay there forever, gripping his phone and thinking in circles, so he set the phone on the corner of his desk and flicked the blinds open. A pale pink line was just highlighting the horizon, and a brisk wind had stirred up, shifting through the old, knotted branches of the oak in the backyard and out across the hay fields next door, the clover and alfalfa rippling like a ribbon caught in a wind stream. The ivy growing up the side of the house trembled and shook and the world seemed to come alive with a mighty yawn.

Blaine sighed, melancholy settling across his shoulders and sapping away the color until everything was grayscale and dulled. He turned away from the streaming peach light and moved back into the shadows of his room.

It was going to be a long day.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: First, let me apologize. I have a million excuses for why this update took so long, but in the end it comes down to the fact that I am a terrible updater and easily distracted by shiny new story ideas. :D Also, I have a million things I want to put in this note, but I know you want to get to the story, so I've decided to put another author's note at the end of chapters to explain a bit more about the story. This is unbetaed and I only read through it once because I got sick of my own words. And it will have Klaine, I promise, just not much yet.

**Warnings: Mild language.**

**Disclaimer: You really do not want to know what I would do with this show if I owned it. xD**

**Edit: Oh my god you guys, I totally forgot to thank you all for the reviews and alerts and favorites! It was awesome, I literally squealed myself off my bed in the first review came in. ^_^**

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><p>By the time Blaine stumbled downstairs, his stomach had twisted itself into a pretzel of anxiety and a cold sweat had broken out across his forehead. He stopped on the bottom stair, gripping the banister with white-knuckled force, and swiped it away, plastering a smile on his face. He could hear his mother bustling around in the kitchen and knew that she would be able to see right through him as she always had, but something about performing—even if it was to hide the real him, the boy who was broken and awkward and had been for a long time—was comforting. Blaine <em>knew<em> how to perform; it was the one thing he did exceptionally well (except screwing things up, anyway, he was pretty sure he did that quite well and quite frequently), the one thing in his life that he was absolutely certain about.

_You are so damaged, Blaine. Can't you see that you're not normal? That you'll never fit in? You are pathetic and weak. Do you even know how to be the real you anymore? _He sank down on the step as the dark voice that had taken up residence somewhere deep in his soul echoed in his mind. It was a billowing blackness that had started with a whisper and grown to something much louder and it was getting stronger still, he could feel it. His throat grew tight with swallowed tears.

It wasn't normal, but he didn't know what it was and it was possible he was just losing his mind and he couldn't fix it but he couldn't ask anyone else to either, especially not Kurt because then Kurt would know he was shattered, probably permanently, and move on to something better. It was all so confusing, because he vaguely remembers thinking around the time he'd first told Kurt he loved him (and Kurt had said it _back_) that his life couldn't be more perfect, his father's disconnectedness and the homophobes of the world be damned, and now somehow, here he was. Somewhere between that last impromptu performance in his familiar, _safe_ blazer and "Blaine, we are going shopping because senior year starts in exactly a week and as your boyfriend I simply cannot let you traipse through McKinley's front doors wearing what you usually wear," he'd managed to completely lose himself.

Absently, he wondered if there was another Blaine out there—or at the very least, the pieces he seemed to be missing—tucked deep in the folds of summer, unaware of the turmoil of his present self.

It was absurd, but it made him laugh, even if it was a little desperately, and that was enough to remind him that he needed to stand up, pretend life was peachy, walk into the kitchen and make pleasant and polite conversation with his mother while studiously avoiding eye contact with his father, and then walk into McKinley by Kurt's side without passing out or panicking like a little girl.

_Breathe Blaine. Oxygen is your friend._ He sucked harshly at the air, standing dizzily._ Good boy! Now, you learned to walk when you were eight months old. Put one foot in front of the other and try not to fall. _

Blaine snorted derisively, the sound shocking him so much that he tripped and bumped loudly against the banister as he caught himself.

_That was smooth, Blaine. Nice job._

_Are you always this snarky in the morning?_ He figured at this point he was beyond the point of no return and if anything, his sanity was something he'd lost lying in the grass under the stars next to a warm body, surrounded by the soft glow of fireflies and the endlessness of summer.

He was stopped from further analysis of the strange inner workings of his own mind by his mother rushing into the hallway from the kitchen, slightly panicked.

"Blaine! Oh, thank _god_, I heard a thud and thought you'd fallen down the stairs." She brushed an errant black curl from her face, sighing exasperatedly. "What in the world were you doing?"

"Um, I tripped."

She rolled her eyes and turned back into the kitchen. "I swear to god, between you and your father I'll be gray before I'm thirty."

Blaine followed her away from the stairs and out into the open, well-lit kitchen. It was bright yellow, but not garishly so, and was tastefully decorated with marble countertops and off-white cabinets. A picture window on the far wall usually allowed lots of natural light to stream in across the table in the mornings, but today the sky was gray and overcast. He watched from the door for a moment as his mother went back to making toast, trying to ignore his father sitting at the table and grinning rather amusedly, eyes glinting with whatever comment he was about to make.

"Caroline, dear, weren't you thirty last year?"

Blaine released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and smiled a little, watching his mother whip around from where she was standing at the counter and perch a hand on her hip disapprovingly. He'd been expecting something else—something probably intended to be teasing about his hair or his clothes or anything just a little not-straight—from his father, and watching them banter playfully was something he didn't often see. He almost felt like he was intruding.

"Yes, and I will be turning thirty again this year." She sniffed mockingly, but her twinkling eyes gave her away.

His father laughed and went back to his crossword puzzle. Blaine almost smiled, still feeling a bit out of place, and sat down at the table across from his dad. His father didn't look up. He immediately felt tense, and the churning in his stomach worsened ten-fold. His mother eyed them cautiously for a moment, as if sensing the change in the atmosphere, before turning back to the counter. Blaine could tell she was still listening carefully—for what he was unsure of, because his dad had never been violent or even outright hateful to him. Their relationship had always been complicated, even before he'd come out. Where his mother was open and easy to get along with, his father and he had often struggled to find common ground, and mostly ended up dancing tensely around each other instead.

And then he'd told them, crying, that he was gay and wanted to take another boy to a dance and could they please still love him because he'd only ever wanted to be a good son. His mother had held him for hours, murmuring nonsense. His father had stiffened, disappeared into his study, and avoided him for a whole month. And then, one night, lying alone on a hospital bed bleeding and lost and wanting his parents more than anything, he'd caught a glimpse of panic in his eyes as he leaned forward to give him a short, awkward hug that had hurt more than comforted before he had stepped back and turned into stoic Mr. Anderson again.

Two weeks later he had found himself walking down a long, elegant hallway at Dalton for his first class, petrified and feeling very, very small. His father had stopped avoiding him, but they had even less in common than ever before. His mother had cooing and coddling him for days in a maddening sort of way, and some part of him was glad to be out of the house again. But what he wanted most—what he'd always wanted most—was to be able to talk to his dad about school and singing and going to college in New York. He wanted to make his dad _proud_, damn it.

Blaine had been wishing more than ever lately that he could just sit down and tell his dad how confused he was, how empty and numb he felt all the time, how lost and ridiculous he was. But their relationship was as tense as it had ever been, especially when he'd told them he was transferring to public school to be with his boyfriend.

He was pulled from his rambling thoughts when his mother set a plate of warm toast in front of him, smeared with grape jelly and kissed the side of his head before walking back to the counter. Blaine rolled his eyes.

"_Mom._ I am not five-years-old!"

She simply laughed. "Of course not, sweetheart."

Blaine looked back down and half-heartedly grabbed a corner of the toast. He nibbled at it before giving up and dropping it back on the plate. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket just to give his hands something to do for a moment and checked the time, surprised to see he was actually running a little early.

There was also a text from Kurt. _I love you, mad or not. See you soon. God, I am so excited! Sorry. :) _He could almost hear his squeal of delight and it made him laugh, heart constricting painfully with affection and good god, he was so in love with that boy that it felt like his soul had completely flown away, tethered to Kurt and following after him like an excited puppy.

"Blaine, you know the rules. No phones at the table." There was a brief rustle of newspaper and starched fabric and Blaine looked up to see his father frowning at him.

Swallowing the ridiculous urge to cry and wincing—so much for his dad ignoring him. "Yes sir. Sorry Dad." He slid the phone back into his pocket without replying and looked back down at his lap.

He sat for just a second more before nervous energy forced him from the chair. His hands were itching to tap out a reply, and his legs felt restless with anxiety and anticipation. "I should probably go anyway, Ku- I, ah, don't want to be late. Thanks for breakfast mom."

Blaine walked as fast as he could from the kitchen, horrified to realize he'd started crying. It was getting ridiculous how many tears he'd been shedding lately. Furiously, he swiped at his cheeks and took a deep breath, leaning against the wall of the foyer. His mother's voice drifted toward him in the silence.

"…was uncalled for, Michael." There was a loud sigh, presumably from his father, and then, "He is your _son_. Go talk to him, for heaven sakes."

"It's not that easy, Caroline."

"Why not? Have you not noticed—"

Blaine refused to stick around and listen to them argue about him again and pushed away from the wall, grabbing his jacket and messenger bag. He reached for his keys automatically only to discover they weren't on the little table near the door like they usually were. He patted the pockets of his jeans fruitlessly, torn between swearing up a storm and curling into a little ball and sobbing. It was an interesting sensation.

"Damn _it_," he growled to himself as he dropped his things again.

"Looking for these?"

Startled, Blaine spun around to face his dad, who was standing awkwardly just inside the foyer, dangling his keys from an outstretched hand.

_Trap, trap! _His mind screamed, but this was the most interaction he'd had with his father in months, and a stubborn part of him didn't want to give that up.

"You, uh, your mother said you left them in your jeans yesterday." He shifted from foot to foot nervously. "Quite unlike you, actually." He winced almost instantly, as if regretting his words.

"Oh. Well, thank you." Blaine cautiously took them from his hand before reaching down to pick up his coat and bag and moving slowly toward the door.

The silence was heavy and pressing with all the weight of years of unspoken things hanging above them. It felt like an ocean had swelled between them, storm-tossed and angry, and he was drowning under the enormity of all of it. He had to get out of there before he fell apart in a heap on the floor from the pressure.

He muttered a quick, "Bye, Dad," and then he was out the door and halfway across the yard to the small black car in the driveway. He vaguely heard the front door open and close again behind him, but he determinedly kept walking, refusing to look back.

"Blaine, wait!" A hand reached out and gripped his shoulder. "Please—just, ah, hear me out, okay?"

He spun around, shrugging the hand away. He thought he saw a vague look of hurt flash briefly behind his father's eyes before brushing it off as absurd. "Dad, I'm going to be late."

His father looked down and Blaine turned back toward his car.

"Wait, um, what if you let me drive you?"

Blaine stopped, frozen. Even if his relationship to his father was as confusing and complicated as hell, it was at the very least guaranteed to be one of the few aspects of his life that never changed. It was always the same, and now his dad was breaking the pattern. He was changing the formula of their interactions. And Blaine had no idea what to do.

"You want to—um, _what_?" Blaine said breathlessly, "Don't you have to go to work?" _And I don't know if I could survive 45 minutes in a car with you without opening the door and jumping out._

His dad looked back at the front of the house, ignoring the question, and Blaine thought he saw a curtain twitch. He wondered what exactly his mother had threatened his father with to get him to act like this, but _damn_, it must've been good, because she had occasionally tried to force them to fix their relationship before and it had never worked. _Until now._

"Will you let me drive you to school?" His dad enunciated slowly, as if speaking to a small child. Normally he would be offended, but something about being around his dad always left him feeling like a needy, lonely little boy again.

"_Why_?"

"Please, I just—listen, I just thought we could talk." His dad gave him a pleading sort of look.

Blaine dumbly handed him the keys, too shocked to do anything else, and feeling like he'd stepped into an episode of _The Twilight Zone_, he walked around to passenger seat, tossing his stuff carelessly across the back seat. His dad wordlessly started the engine and backed down the driveway, pulling out onto the road and heading in the direction of Lima with little preamble and a stoic expression.

"Dad, seriously, what's the deal?" _I am so confused right now, which is not helping, because my head already hurts with all the voices telling me I'm worthless. _

"Nothing. Can't a father offer his son a ride every once in a while?"

Blaine gaped, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. "Are you serious?"

His gave him a reproachful look. "Don't use that tone of voice. I know you think I don't care about you, and I'm sorry about that. But Blaine, it has always been a two way street."

"You're actually serious."

"Look, this hasn't been easy for me—"

"Hasn't been easy for _you_? I ended up in the hospital, Dad. With broken bones."

"I know, I was there. God, I—" His father's jaw clenched tightly and his knuckles turned white on the steering wheel.

Blaine swallowed thickly and turned his head to watch out the window, his reflection fading in and out of focus on the glass as he tried to ignore the way his eyes were watering. Absently, he noted that the blur of green as they sped by was occasionally broken up by little splashes of flame and butterscotch.

"This was a really bad idea, Dad."

"You're probably right."

Silence filled the car again, and Blaine stared out the window. A raindrop splashed against the glass before racing away; it was soon joined by a million others. They were caught in a downpour.

Blaine closed his eyes and listened as it hammered against the metal. He wondered if he could just roll down the window and let it soak him; let it drown him more thoroughly than the one he'd been caught in for months.

_If only it were that simple._

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><p>AN 2: This chapter turned out completely different from what I was expecting. His parents were supposed to have a minor roll, a plot device to get into the back story, and they just sort of...wanted something else. I feel like it was maybe hurried or rushed, and it is kind of confusing, but I'm basing all of this on my own experiences with depression, and I remember being so confused about being sad all the time in the beginning. Now, I'm not saying that everyone experiences depression the same way, because they don't, and I certainly can't speak to the mind of a boy, but I feel like depression must at the very least be similiar in most people.

Also, please ask if you have questions. I have this really bad habit of forgetting that you guys can't read my mind, so when I reference something in a story with no explanation and you all are like WTH? that is probably what I have done.

I'm also really curious to see what you guys think about Blaine's dad in this. :)


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